Category: Longform
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Liftoff Episode 12: Geof makes the bigtime
When the Relay podcast guys announced a show about space, my first thought was “sure, Stephen and Jason are great, but they need Geof as a third host”. Well, he hasn’t made it that far yet, but I was excited yesterday to see that he did make it on to Liftoff episode 12 as a guest.
Geof works at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as a Payload Rack Officer for the International Space Station. I’ve heard bits and pieces about his job over the last year, but I learned a lot listening to him talk here. If you’re interested in space, Liftoff is worth a listen.
Music that evokes an emotional response
From a Facebook group post today:
Name a specific musical artist, for whatever reason, that is always able to draw a visceral emotional response from you. And if you’re comfortable, share the reason why!
Rather than respond just on that Facebook group, I thought I’d post here, both because a few more people would read it, and because it’s just the sort of music nerd thing that I will want to answer with my own spin. In this particular case I’m going to give at least three answers, just because I can.
First I’m going to go back to high school and pick the first piece of classical music I really fell head-over-heels in love with: Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto. It really clicked in order for me - first the lovely first movement (especially the slow theme in Eb major), then the slow middle movement, then the big theme of the third movement which is first introduced as a slow piano solo in Bb major, and is then driven home as the big finale. Such fantastic stuff. Grabs me every time. I bought a score of the concerto and learned all the easy piano parts, but never managed to work up all the fast nasty parts.
I have several recordings of Rach 2, but my favorite is one I just came upon a few years ago: Stephen Hough with the Andrew Litton and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Hough plays it fast and rowdy. I think Sergei himself might approve. Here’s a couple minutes of a live recording that gives you an idea of the quick tempo:
If I move on to my adult years, there are a few artists whose music has resonated with me like no other.
My nostalgia pick is Rich Mullins; I became a fan in high school, played and sang his music repeatedly, spent a couple days in shock when he died, and continue to count him as a huge influence on my own musical instincts. The song of his that gets a reaction now is one that I didn’t necessarily love as much as a kid, but that resonates hugely now as an adult.
My folks, they were always the first family to arrive with seven people jammed into a car that seated five there was one bathroom to bathe and shave in six of us stood in line Hot water for only three, but we all did just fine Talk about your miracles, talk about your faith My dad, he could make things grow out of Indiana clay Mom could make a gourmet meal out of just cornbread and beans And they learned to give faith hands and feet And somehow gave it wings
My dad was a piano tuner from Nebraska, not a farmer from Indiana, but outside of that… this is pretty easily the story of my family. I almost never get through it with dry eyes.
Later on I’d point to the music of Andrew Osenga (“Early in the Morning” and “Swing Wide the Glimmering Gates”) and Andrew Peterson (whose Behold the Lamb of God is, in my book, one of the few perfect Christian albums ever).
The first song that comes to mind from lately, though, is “Wait for It” from Hamilton. (Yeah, I’m talking about Hamilton again. Deal with it.)
In a recent interview with the Hamilton cast, Leslie Odom Jr. (who plays Aaron Burr) as his favorite - the moment of tension and focus in the production that ropes the audience in. It’s tough to perform, but when it’s right, it’s amazing. It’s a beautiful song, and the lyrics of the chorus elicit a response from me every time. In it, Aaron Burr reflects on the challenges and losses in his own life:
Life doesn’t discriminate Between the sinners and the saints It takes, and it takes, and it takes And we keep living anyway We rise, and we fall, and we break, And we make our mistakes And if there’s a reason I’m still alive When so many around me have died I’m willing to wait for it
There’s a desperation and intensity to Burr’s cry in this song that grabs me hard - the desire for real meaning, the joy and the pain of life… man oh man.
So there you go, songs that provoke a visceral reaction from me. Do you have any of your own?
Finished reading: The Type B Manager by Victor Lipman
Being a recently new manager at work, and having a definite Type B personality, I saw The Type B Manager on the shelf and thought, hey, why not?
Now, books on management, in general, are a tough sell for me. After a lifetime of reading thick engineering, physics, history, and theology, management books seem relatively thin books and mostly a collection of platitudes and “well, duh” principles. But in an attempt to become a good manager, I keep giving them a try.
The Type B Manager was an exemplary specimen of this sort of thin platitude. Even in trying to address Type B personalities, the book tends to describe the management challenge, what a Type A manager would do, and then how a Type B manager might handle it differently - a strategy that made the Type B personality seem like the poorer option.
Maybe I just need to give up management books in general and spend more time reading Rands instead.
Finished reading: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
I didn’t get as much read on this business trip as I’d thought I might - French schedules have you eating dinner late with little time left for recreational reading before bed - but I did manage to finish All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. This novel, set in WWII, tells the parallel stories of a blind French girl and a German boy with a precocious engineering streak.
It’s a beautifully told story, capturing a smaller slice of life than you often get from a World War II novel. The intersections between the two main characters become clear by about half-way through the book, and I spent the rest of the time hoping against hope that the ending would be satisfactory. It was.
All the Light We Cannot See won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and while I haven’t read that much 2014/2015 fiction yet, I can understand why this one took the prize. Highly recommended.
I should've remembered this from last time...
This post serves simply as a reminder to myself that when a European immigration officer asks where I came from and then asks “by?” he doesn’t want to know what Iowa is near to - he wants to know what cities my flight connected through.
And he’ll get rather irritated if I don’t pick up on that quickly.
On the other hand, if he can say “By? By? By?” with a little more rhythm, he might have a future on an ‘N Sync reunion tour.
Fiet: Wheaton College and the Fear Machine
Midwestern pastor (and Wheaton alum) April Fiet has some really good thoughts today about the Wheaton College brouhaha around professor Larycia Hawkins’ comments about Muslims and Christians worshiping the “same God”.
Fiet doesn’t tackle the comments themselves, but rather our approach to them, regardless of our position.
What troubles me the most deeply about what is happening at Wheaton has very little to do with statements of faith, and more to do with a hermeneutic of suspicion. More narrowly, I am troubled by the fear that seems to be driving much of the conversation. It seems to me that too many conversations within the church are being powered by fear rather than by love for one another.
She talks about some of the fears she sees, and some of the really good things she has seen happen when fear was not so prevalent. And I really like this reminder:
Fear cannot be the motivating factor for the way Christians live, move, and exist in this world. When writing about the Christian life, the author of Hebrews put it this way: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:1-2a) We run as people motivated by the cloud of witnesses all around us, and we run with our eyes on Jesus. We are not running because we’re afraid. We are not running because there’s something scary chasing us. We’re running as part of a group that has all eyes fixed on Jesus.
I really appreciate her focus here. It dovetails nicely, too, with something one of my pastors has been saying recently on this topic, which is that even if we disagree with Professor Hawkins’ position, we can make good progress in not “othering” our Muslim neighbors simply by remembering and adhering to God’s command to love our neighbor.
Anyhow, Fiet’s piece: recommended reading.
Finished reading: How to Watch a Movie by David Thomson
I picked up David Thomson’s How to Watch a Movie on a whim from my local library shelf knowing nothing about it or Thomson. You can’t really call me a movie buff - I just don’t have time to watch many movies - but I really enjoy watching them when I get the chance, and I love listening to smart people talk about movies. (The Filmspotting podcast has been at the top of my must-listen list for at least the past 5 years.)
So for my interest in movies, I haven’t (to my recollection) read any books about them.
And, (spoiler alert?) if you’re in my shoes, I wouldn’t recommend this one.
Maybe it’s brilliant and I just need to read 10 other books to get ready for it, but I don’t think so. In 200 pages Thomson talks about different aspects of film-making and film-watching and manages to come across as a pompous snob. I pushed on through because it was short and I wasn’t ready to start my “nope” list on Goodreads quite yet.
So, I need to find some better books on film. Which jogs my memory - the Filmspotting guys did an episode recently where they listed their top 5 film books. Guess I should’ve paid more attention. Maybe I’ll give it another listen.
Meador: on Intervarsity and Black Lives Matter
Jake Meador over at Mere O has a really good piece today on the white evangelical response to the messages at Urbana last month, and more generally to the Black Lives Matter movement:
We do not have to endorse everything about the organization Black Lives Matter. We shouldn’t feel like we cannot ask questions—even critical questions—about speeches like the one given by Michelle. But we also should not be instinctively suspicious of the claims of our black neighbors. Our nation’s history is such that we should have no difficulty believing our black neighbors when they tell us about what life is like for black people in America today. Indeed, given our nation’s appalling history it would be more surprising if they didn’t have any problems.
Definitely worth reading the whole thing.
Finished reading: Hackers by Steven Levy
I hadn’t heard of this one prior to listening to an Incomparable podcast episode last year - for the life of me I can’t figure out which one - but it stocked my Amazon wish list with several tech history books, which my mother-in-law then generously gave me for Christmas.
In Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Levy tells the story of software hackers who for the most part aren’t household names. Sure, there are quick mentions of Jobs, Wozniak, and Gates, but there are a dozen others you’ve never heard of who are similarly fascinating.
Levy talks quite a bit about the hacker ethos and principles that were pervasive from the early 1960s until, well, business and money got significantly involved in the late 1970s. It was a fun read for me since I recognize my own potential to become one of these heads-down, computer-obsessed hackers who barely notices when the sun rises or sets. (A course I have thankfully avoided thus far… for which my wife is both thankful and probably largely responsible.)
Yes, I’m shamelessly picking up John Halton’s habit of blogging reading progress this year, if for no other reason than it gives me 60+ additional posts a year… and maybe give a reader a good recommendation for a book to read. (Or to stay away from!)